[sandworm101]

Monopoly is if one corporation owns an entire market. This is about multiple corporations. The proper word is cartel or "corpocracy" which dislike as corporations are just a legal fiction. Someone still owns the corporation. The article isn't really about americans not owning stuff. It is about average americans not owning stuff. Poor, or at least not-rich, people are today less likely to own things like houses and cars. But the rich still own plenty. They are owning a greater percentage of everything. So perhaps the best word is plutocracy.

[rapnie]

Plutocracy is the name of governance style where a few parties hold all the power.

But on a corporate level oligopoly would be better. A few corporations dominating an entire market segment.

[chiefalchemist]

Sounds like the 70's film classic "Rollerball."

[sunshinelackof]

> Monopoly is if one corporation owns an entire market. This isn't quite right. Traditionally for a company to be a monopoly it isn't even required it control a majority of the market. It has more to do with the company being in a privileged circumstance in a market and explicitly using that privilege to bolster themselves or suppress competition in the same or related markets.

An example is Microsoft with Netscape. Microsoft was sued with anti-trust laws not because IE or Windows owned the entire market, but because Windows gave Microsoft a privileged place in the web-browser market that they abused.